eling
more at rest."

Then, as if from a sudden fear of ridicule, John said, laughing:
"Besides, looking at the question from a purely practical side, it must
be hardly wise for me to return to society for the present. I like
neither fox-hunting, marriage, Robert Louis Stevenson's stories, nor Sir
Frederick Leighton's pictures; I prefer monkish Latin to Virgil, and I
adore Degas, Monet, Manet, and Renoir, and since this is so, and alas, I
am afraid irrevocably so, do you not think that I should do well to keep
outside a world in which I should be the only wrong and vicious being?
Why spoil that charming thing called society by my unlovely presence?

"Selfishness! I know what you are going to say--here is my answer. I
assure you I administer to the best of my ability the fortune God gave
me--I spare myself no trouble. I know the financial position of every
farmer on my estate, the property does not owe fifty pounds;--I keep the
tenants up to the mark; I do not approve of waste and idleness, but when
a little help is wanted I am ready to give it. And then, well, I don't
mind telling you, but it must not go any further. I have made a will
leaving something to all my tenants; I give away a fixed amount in
charity yearly."

"I know, my dear John, I know your life is not a dissolute one; but your
mother is very anxious, remember you are the last. Is there no chance
of your ever marrying?"

"I don't think I could live with a woman; there is something very
degrading, something very gross in such relations. There is a better and
a purer life to lead ... an inner life, coloured and permeated with
feelings and tones that are, oh, how intensely our own, and he who may
have this life, shrinks from any adventitious presence that might jar or
destroy it. To keep oneself unspotted, to feel conscious of no sense of
stain, to know, yes, to hear the heart repeat that this self--hands,
face, mouth and skin--is free from all befouling touch, is all one's
own. I have always been strongly attracted to the colour white, and I
can so well and so acutely understand the legend that tells that the
ermine dies of gentle loathing of its own self, should a stain come upon
its immaculate fur.... I should not say a legend, for that implies that
the story is untrue, and it is not untrue--so beautiful a thought could
not be untrue."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Qui Romam regis.]

CHAPTER III.

"Urns on corner walls, pilasters, circular wi